Kitty Horrorshow

Kitty Horrorshow is the pseudonym of an independent video game developer. Releasing her games on the distribution platform itch.io, she specializes in the psychological horror genre, with her games focusing on surreal and atmospheric horror in the aesthetic style of early 3D video games.

Though Horrorshow wanted to become a game developer when she was younger, her initial attempts led her to abandon game development, finding it too complex, leading her to focus on creative writing instead. Several years later, Horrorshow became interested in game development once again after playing Arcadia by Jonas Kyratzes, made using Twine, an interactive story creation piece of software.

Horrorshow's art style is influenced by early 3D video games, such as Doom, Hexen: Beyond Heretic, Thief: The Dark Project, and EverQuest, citing their ability to create immersive worlds while still remaining unmistakably computer-generated. In an interview with Boing Boing, Horrorshow explained that the world of Silent Hill served as "more of a home" than anything she had experienced in reality, and that the works of Porpentine had greatly changed her outlook on video games.

Owen Vince of Kill Screen compared the stylistic, low-polygon graphics in Horrorshow's games to the aesthetics of German Expressionism, specifically The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Her games often lack characters with whom to interact, but focus instead on dreamlike scenes to explore. Horrorshow avoids jump scares and player character death, explaining in an interview with Slate that she found them uninteresting, instead using elements of psychological horror, such as leaving disturbing scenes unexplained and open to interpretation, to scare players. Commenting on the lack of jump scares in Horrorshow's games, Brendan Caldwell of Rock, Paper, Shotgun wrote, "These games creep up on you slowly and rattle your brain, not your instincts."

In 2017, Horrorshow was one of four game creators featured at the "No Quarter" exhibition hosted by the New York University Game Center.

Originally published in October 2014, CHYRZA is a game about exploring a vast desert populated with large monoliths that surround a deserted village. A narrator describes the scenes, but in the first person voice of a traveler in the desert, detailing their disturbing encounters and backgrounds. Fears around a large pyramid that continuously looms in the distance is also repeatedly referenced. The structures found throughout the desert have their sources revealed to the player by the narrator when reaching the top of each one in an increasingly paranoid and unhinged manner.

Chris Priestman of Kill Screen compared the atmosphere to The Twilight Zone's debut episode titled "Where Is Everybody?", saying it evoked the "feeling of being watched and isolated" and being slowly driven mad by the delusional psychosis. Rock, Paper, Shotgun's Philippa Warr compared the setting to one of the bizarre news items that could be found in the fictional narrative podcast Welcome to Night Vale, especially one event where a "mysterious philosophical pyramid" arrives at the town.

Released in 2016, Anatomy is a game focused on exploring an empty house and finding voice tapes within it as the house begins to change around the player. Initially, collecting these tapes is the only component of the game, but the program eventually glitches and closes itself; when reopened, the house has changed radically, with static on the game screen and audio distortion occurring. These shutdown events are repeated as the house continues to degrade more and more upon continued playing of the game.